Chapter Fifteen
Fanderwinking
Robert had assumed that travelling through the intricate system of the doors would become easier the more he did it. He was wrong. He’d lost count of how many times he’d turned around and stepped back through the door, and the nauseating feeling that crept up his bowels and tickled his tonsils had yet to subside.
He stepped out of yet another door and as he did so, the world slipped back into focus. He was standing on a long beach with a vast blue ocean gently lapping up on the sand. The sun peeked over the horizon and the smell of sea air filled Robert’s lungs. And then he saw them. He wasn’t sure at first, but as the sun crested the horizon and then suddenly shot into the air, spilling morning sunlight over everything, he quickly became certain.
“Those are Mermaids!” he exclaimed.
Three female Mermaids were lying farther down the beach, sunning themselves. They were naked from the waist up. I suppose they’re naked from the waist down, too. “They’re beautiful!” he said.
“Yeah I suppose,” said the voice.
“You suppose? You suppose? Look at them, they’re beautiful!”
“Well, they’re half fish aren’t they?”
Robert looked at the Mermaids. “From the waist down, yes.”
“I just don’t see the appeal,” said the voice.
“How can you possibly be me? Do you know how many times we’ve disagreed over the last several hours?”
“Well, I haven’t been counting…”
“Twenty-six,” said Robert.
“So you’ve been counting, then, have you?”
“Twenty-six disagreements!”
“Well, it’s been a long night.”
“I just don’t understand how you can possibly be my mind or my conscience or whatever you are. I just don’t―”
“Those Mermaids are getting closer,” said the voice.
Robert opened his mouth to argue and then realized that the voice in his head was correct. The Mermaids were crawling along the beach toward Robert, dragging their long fish tails behind them. They were around thirty feet away. Their naked breasts looked large and perky and bounced seductively. Their long, dark hair blew in the sea breeze. The morning sun shone upon their bronzed skin. They made the most beautiful snarling sound and their fangs looked sharp…?
“What the hell?” asked Robert.
Twenty feet.
The Mermaids were beautiful but they were snarling and even spitting a little. Each had her mouth opened unnaturally wide, revealing long, snake-like fangs. One of them looked like she had bits of a dead creature hanging from her jowls. They were crawling faster and they looked distinctly hungry.
Ten feet.
“I hate to keep suggesting this,” said the voice.
“I’m way ahead of you,” said Robert and turned and ran. The door was still open, a shimmering hole on the beach. He could hear the snarling of the Mermaids behind him. He dived head first through the door―
―and rolled out onto hard green stone.
He looked back at the door to check the door’s size. He’d learned that the doors shrank the closer they came to winking out of existence, and that the average life span of any given door was around fifteen minutes. This one was still large so he had some time.
He was standing in a courtyard. Or at least, he was standing in the remains of a courtyard. There were piles of green rubble everywhere. The green rock sparkled where the sunlight hit it.
“It looks like emeralds,” said Robert who had gotten far too used to speaking out loud as he was now completely comfortable with the voice in his head speaking back to him.
“Pretty,” said the voice.
“This must have been the Emerald City. From the Wizard of Oz. Or, well, I suppose the book was based on what this used to be,” Robert corrected himself.
He still had a hard time getting his head around the fairy tales of Othaside being based on actual reality, even though they were only loosely based. The Mermaids had been a real eye-opener. Mermaids as bloodthirsty creatures were a far cry from beautiful creatures who helped people, sang songs all day, and hung out with fishes.
He must have travelled miles through Thiside during the last several hours trying to find a door that was remotely close to the Archives. Almost everywhere he went, there had been signs of life. He’d dropped into a colony of Fairies, he’d appeared in a dim mine shaft with slimy skulking things living in the dark, he’d walked close to the edge of a high cliff, and conversed with an old man living in a cave. Even the most remote areas of Thiside had someone or something living in it. But not here. This place was desolate; not even the air moved.
Robert climbed to the top of a pile of rubble made up of broken statues. He looked out over the landscape, which stretched all the way to a blackened harbour that looked like it had burned to pieces. Piles of rubble lay everywhere. More disturbing were the carcasses of giant man-like creatures that were scattered everywhere. It looked like someone or something waged an epic battle here. In the stillness that occupied this broken city, there was a sense of something that Robert couldn’t place. It felt…
“Electric,” said the voice.
“Yeah, I can feel it. There’s a heaviness to it.”
“Ohh, did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“Sorry, thought I felt a shiver. Felt good. This place has magic.”
If the voice in Robert’s head had been a person, he imagined that it would be staring off into the distance, thinking carefully about a faint memory stirred by the feeling it had just experienced. He wasn’t sure why he suddenly thought of the voice as a different person, as it was firmly present in his mind, but the image seemed to fit, if only for a moment.
“We should keep going,” said Robert and his stomach whimpered at the prospect of re-entering the doors.
Robert slid and crawled his way down the pile of rubble and stepped back through the doorway―
―and stepped out onto a grassy hill at the edge of a forest. Robert recognized this place. It was where he’d run into the forest the night before, to escape from Lily. That seemed like a lifetime ago. He’d been wandering through countless door after door all night, trying to get back here. But now he was here, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. Thankfully, fate had the situation well in hand.
“Robert,” said Lily’s voice from behind him.
He’d been looking down into the valley and turned now to see Lily walking out of the forest. She was completely naked and streaked with mud. Her hair was matted and she had deep circles under her eyes. She had what looked like blood around her mouth. Despite all this, and it could have been due to sleep exhaustion, Robert still found her beautiful. In her left hand hung something silver: Robert’s necklace and vial of blood from the White Rabbit.
Of course, she’d tried to tear him to pieces last night, but now she was Lily again. Or Lillian Redcloak as the Historian had referred to her. Redcloak.
“Little Red Riding Hood,” he said as the realization dawned on him.
Lily stood a few feet away, arms at her side.
“Yes, that’s what I’m called in Othaside. A true bastardization of the real tale, as you saw last night.” She looked ashamed.
“Yes, it’s a bit different than what was read to us in elementary school. Although the real story would have scarred us for life, I imagine.”